Day 1.

           During the orientation for service learning, one of the coordinators at Bailey Gatzert was sharing her experiences she went through volunteering at the elementary school, both good and bad. She had mentioned a particular girl who is very intelligent for her age discourse, but always misbehaves and is disrespectful to her teachers and peers. For instance, instead of going to the bathroom when given permission to, she went outside to the field and ran around with the soccer players during practice and the situation went out of control. She would not listen to teachers, or she would always be the student who is never in line, but wandering around. The coordinator told us that the girl is a non-mainstream student who has two older brothers who act rough around her, which is a possible reason why the girl always misbehaves.

            Ironically, on my first day volunteering at Bailey Gatzert, I was paired up with the exact same child, Alexia. I was helping Alexia with the “Brain Train” program, which is a program after school that helps students in first grade improves their reading, writing, comprehension, and math skills. At the reading and writing station, Alexia read the words on the flashcards quickly and wrote them correctly, with no mistakes on her piece of paper. However, from time to time, she would look up at the ceiling and talk about off topic subjects, trying to redirect my attention away from helping her complete her assignments. Alexia cannot stay still, and I would always have to tell her, “sit up please, Alexia” to remind her to stop misbehaving. Although she did misbehave, she completed her assignment correctly with very few errors and in a quick amount of time.

            At the next station, which was math, the students played a game of freeze-tag to release some of their energy so they could concentrate better on their assignment. Full of energy, Alexia ran around the room trying to tag her peers during the game. The laughter and excitement the students gave off created a happy atmosphere in the room. When the game was finished, I had helped Alexia count to the number 100 by 2’s, and then by 5’s. Smart as she is, Alexia did not need my help and correctly counted to the number 100 by herself. Alexia is a very intelligent student, but she sometimes misbehaves to get attention from the teacher or her peers. I am looking forward to continue tutoring her throughout the quarter.